Kasutajad - Decathlon 2000

There is obviously some give and take here. I would say that you can get stronger without getting bigger, and that is the key. Why in the world would a decathlete be focused on his Bench Press PR is beyond me, I cannot make sense of that, but as far as heavy weight lifting, this is not the main focus of any real athlete. Never during a decathlon are we statically trying to lift a huge amount of weight, it is all an active moving or exploding of mainly our own body's mass, and then sometimes an implement that is only a small percentage of our own body mass. This is why full body Olympic Lifts and their respective PR's etc should be more of a focus in the weight room. I thought that my PR's of over 145kg (315 lbs) in the power clean was well above average for decathletes, until I worked out with Tom Pappas, Bryan Clay, Trey Hardee, and the other US decathletes, and then I saw that I was really just about equal with them in this category. In my personal opinion, the previous posters on the topic are right on, but for someone that is just starting out in the weightroom, they need to do higher reps, just simply for working on form and technique. When it gets to the point where you know what you are doing, a small muscle group exercise like the bench press (compared to olympic lifts) or other similar exercises should not be done with a focus on max weight or mass gain with higher reps(as stated above), but should be focused on connecting the weaker points of the body to the absolutely necessary stronger then an OX core center of mass in the decathlete. Because once again the whole of the decathlon is the correct active application of force, and controlling and guiding our center of mass and the biggest mass we have going for us is our own body, I would much rather have 5lbs in my core (center of mass) than huge arms. What does 5lbs of mass on your upper body help you if it is not connected to your legs and hence the ground through a strengthened core? We especially in the decathlon have to be concerned with "usable" weight. Anything not necessary is just slowing you down. My Bench Press Max has always been lower than my Power Clean Max. In fact my bench press max has for a long time now been lower than my Clean and Jerk Max, and with a 16.61m shot PR, I would say that this is further evidence that it is more important that we can use what we have, than add more and hope we can control it. Controlling what you have is always better than adding extra weight to the wrong areas. If my hips and core can get the shot moving faster than you then it really doesn't matter how much better of a BP max or how much more you weigh than me, because I just made that shot weightless with core strength and using what I have.